Table Of Content

Imprint Published in March 2011 Smashing Media GmbH, Freiburg, Germany Book Cover Design: Ricardo Gimenes Editing: Thomas Burkert Proofreading: Brian Goessling Concept: Sven Lennartz, Vitaly Friedman Founded in September 2006, Smashing Magazine delivers useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. Smashing Magazine is a well-respected international online publication for professional Web designers and developers. Our main goal is to support the Web design community with useful and valuable articles and resources, written and created by experienced designers and developers. ISBN: 978-3-943075-09-0 Version: July 26, 2011 Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 2 Table of Contents Preface The Current State of Web Design Web Design Trends Responsive Web Design: What It Is and How to Use It A Showcase Of Responsive Web Design Persuasion Triggers in Web Design Why We Should Start Using CSS3 and HTML5 Today HTML5: The Facts And The Myths The User Is The Anonymous Web Designer The Design Matrix: A Powerful Tool for Guiding Client Input A Design Is Only As Deep As It Is Usable Web Designers, Don’t Do It Alone Why Design-By-Committee Should Die Design Better and Faster with Rapid Prototyping When a Thousand Words Is Worth a Picture The Authors Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 3 Preface We’re seeing better interaction design and more aesthetically pleasing designs. And we’re seeing more personal, engaging and memorable sites, too. But what exactly is making the difference? What new directions is Web design heading in today? What new techniques, concepts and ideas are becoming important? This eBook describes existing and upcoming trends and explains how the Web design might evolve in the coming months and years. It also touches on what Web designers should be ready for to keep abreast of new challenges and opportunities. The articles are the best about professional Web design that have been published on Smashing Magazine in 2010 and 2011. They have been carefully edited and prepared for this eBook. Some screenshots and links were removed to make the book easier to read and print out. — Thomas Burkert, Smashing eBook Editor Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 4 The Current State of Web Design Vitaly Friedman Web design is a fickle industry. Just like every other form of artistic expression, Web design has undergone a continuous and surprisingly fast evolution. Once a playground for enthusiasts, it has now become a mature rich medium with strong aesthetic and functional appeal. In fact, we are experiencing what could be the golden era of Web design — or at least the best period thus far. We have powerful new tools at our disposal (CSS3, HTML5, font-embedding, etc.), a plethora of freely available resources, a strong design community and also (if you needed any more!) reliable support of Web standards in the major browsers. We’re seeing better interaction design and more aesthetically pleasing designs. And we’re seeing more personal, engaging and memorable sites, too. But what exactly is making the difference? What new directions is Web design heading in today? What new techniques, concepts and ideas are becoming important? In this article, we present some observations on the current state of Web design. We describe existing and upcoming trends and explain how Web design might evolve in the coming months and years. We’ll also touch on what we as Web designers should be ready for to keep abreast of new challenges and opportunities. Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 5 Design For Delight As designers, our job is to communicate ideas effectively. For every particular message, we create a context in which the message would work best, guiding users to achieving their tasks, gaining their trust or convincing them of whatever we’re communicating. Of course, there are endless ways to create this context. One of them is to design for visual aesthetics, surprise, joy, happiness — design for delight; design to be memorable and remarkable. Attractive things work better and help focus and keep the user’s attention. Memorable design increases excitement for products and brands, leading to increased engagement. In fact, a strong, reliable emotional relationship between your clients and their audience could be the best thing that ever happens to your career. Although the vast majority of brands are still silent, passive and impersonal, we’ve observed more websites trying hard to engage our senses, whether through a strong aesthetic appeal, through witty animations in the content block or simply through a little extra attention to small design elements on the “About” page. Such designs are beautiful to look at, fun to navigate but, most importantly, memorable — for the simple reason that they are different. By adding delightful personal touches to your designs, you stand out from the crowd and give visitors something to talk about and share with friends and colleagues. And that’s a good start. You can elicit delight in a variety of settings: on your maintenance mode page, on the 404 error page, in your pre-loader, and everywhere else. The idea is to surprise visitors by giving them something pleasant to talk about. Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 6 Bounty Bev Bounty Bev is a beverage company with a beautiful one-page design. Apart from its subtle hover effects and animations, the website has some nice extras: if you scroll down the page manually with the mouse wheel, a small pop-up appears asking you if you need a lift. The typography is strong and memorable, and the design is playful. Simple, clear and personal, the website leaves a strong positive impression. www.bountybev.com Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 7 Analog.coop Analog provides a very personal experience to visitors. When you visit the page, it displays where you are located and tells you the members of the team who are closest to you (in our case, Alan and Jon, who are about 500 miles away in Bristol). The website has a couple of nice Easter eggs that are not visible at first glance. You might want to play around with the header and the photos of team. The page is just fun to explore. analog.coop Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 8 Billy Tamplin On his blog, Billy Tamplin focuses on the small victories in his life. Each post records a personal achievement, displaying a custom-designed merit badge and an explanation of the conquest. Billy uses this metaphor throughout the website, speaking of “super Web abilities” (Agile CSS, PHP-prepared, IE6-reinforced, etc.) and “heroic design strengths” (human-friendly aim, keen creative detail, etc.). He also has a personal portfolio on the website. Notice how well the color scheme fits the theme. The design is simple and beautiful, and the “achievement” twist is unusual and memorable. billytamplin.com Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 9 MIX MIX labs, a community blog for designers and Web developers, doesn’t have hidden features, appealing animations or striking hover effects. Instead, it has a consistent, visually appealing design: can you spot where and how often colorful circles are repeated throughout the website? The design emphasizes the content and has a personal touch. Simply beautiful. visitmix.com Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 10 Mailchimp MailChimp heavily incorporates the monkey metaphor in all aspects of its design. To inform customers of recent updates, Mailchimp present an ASCII animation that tells the user something is happening in the background; this nice detail is surprising yet unobtrusive. The company also uses personal, friendly and perhaps occasionally geeky language when addressing user needs. This is the part of the image that MailChimp thoughtfully preserves in its Web application. www.mailchimp.com Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 11 Keypress Navigation As designers try to make their designs more intuitive, it is no surprise that websites are becoming more responsive. Not only does this apply to user interfaces in modern Web applications (which are becoming as robust as desktop applications — and often smarter), but with the wide adoption of JavaScript libraries, “classic” websites are becoming more robust and interactive, too. One way to make websites more responsive is through “keypress navigation,” which hasn’t been widely adopted so far. But lately we’ve observed more designs implementing this effectively. The most popular setting for such navigation is on photo websites such as Flickr or FFFFound. The general idea is to give users keyboard shortcuts that help them perform tedious tasks, such as navigating between blog posts, moving through images in a slideshow, changing the current view (e.g. from a horizontal to vertical grid), liking articles and navigating between sections of a website. Keypress navigation is common in Flash-based designs, but we are now seeing it applied to CSS-based designs, too. Google Reader is a prime example of advanced keypress navigation, but other websites have good implementations, too. Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 12 They Make Apps Last year, They Make Apps began offering users smooth and advanced keyboard navigation as an alternative to classic scrolling. Users could switch between both modes using a drop-down menu in the main navigation of the page. In “keyboard navigation mode,” users used the arrow keys to navigate between content blocks; the “Return” key triggered the detailed view and “Escape” returned to the main page. For some reason, this navigation isn’t available any longer. patterntap.com Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 13 Mad-ar.ch Marc Anton Dahmen’s website is Flash-based, and its navigation is quite advanced: users can jump to the contact form with “c,” scale images with “-” and “+,” and then navigate and sort images and scroll through text with the vertical arrow keys. mad-ar.ch Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 14 9GAG 9GAG is a social image bookmarking website. Users can navigate to the next and previous image using “j” and “k,” respectively. The current image can be voted up using “l” (for love): no mouse scrolling necessary. In this case, a shortcut to the grid view would be useful, too. 9gag.com Smashing eBook #7│Professional Web Design, Volume 2 │ 15